> Are you willing to go further, and say the public has a poor track
> record of using its power of oversight to ensure that the agencies
> that manage resources in its name do what they are supposed to?
This reminds me of some email I exchanged with Larry Lessig some time
back. In general, I don't think that in this time and place, the vast
majority of people (in the US, at least) are particularly motivated to
ensure that government provide "proper" oversight to public
resources. People seem to be willing to go along with whatever the
government does, as long as they aren't taxed too much, they make
reasonable wages, etc. I offer as evidence the general apathy towards
the Monica Lewinsky scandal: many people were uninterested; others
gave Clinton a high approval rating even though he had obviously lied
under oath.
Under conditions like this, the government may be able to create
something like ICANN, because of the lack of public outcry among a
large number of people.
>> ICANN is an experiment in Internet self-governance. If it fails, then
>> there will most likely be some federally mandated entities created to
>> do what ICANN is doing.
> Thats not the 'problem,' its experimental status is the result of
> the problem. Whether ICANN 'succeeds' or 'fails,' the question of self-
> governance properly should be directed to the Am public: are we
> asleep, or what, to have let the functionaries of our Dept of
> Commerce wander off into making up concepts of *governance* by
> themselves?
See above. I am interested in knowing what the public at large's
opinion of what ICANN, the NTIA, etc. are doing. However, I don't
think a vast majority would ask it to do something else.
If someone did manage to poll the entire Internet user population, and
the result was that a large majority of the people favored a big
business approach, and gave ICANN praise for trying to facilitate
that, what would you think?
--gregbo
